33.2 hours played
Written 4 months ago
Siege of Avalon: Anthology is an old-school isometric RPG that was originally released in six chapters. I remember only having the first two back in the day. Each class: fighter, scout, and mage has its own dedicated chapter (chapter 3,4, and 5) but you can skip the ones that don’t match your class. That said, skipping a third of the game feels like a waste.
The Steam version brings higher resolutions and bug fixes, along with an increased companion limit; four instead of two like in the original. This makes the game too easy in the early and mid-game, but later on, keeping everyone alive becomes more of a chore.
The story starts with you traveling to the besieged citadel Avalon, to inform your stationed brother of your father’s passing. Things escalate quickly, and you soon find yourself helping in the war effort. There’s a lot of reading involved, with long dialogues and journal entries. I really enjoyed the story and the quests. There’s a lot of running around Avalon looking for NPCs, and the fortress is big enough that it sometimes gets tedious.
Combat takes some figuring out. I played as a scout, which had a rough start compared to the fighter or mage. The shadow ability, meant to help with stealth, was practically useless at low levels, forcing me to rely on magic as a backup. It wasn’t until Chapter 2 that things really opened up for the class; I could finally sneak past enemies and take them out from a distance in a single shot. You earn training points from quests and combat to improve skills or attributes, and in the beginning, enemy scaling keeps things balanced. But it quickly spirals out of control. By the later chapters, everything can one-shot you, and you can one-shot everything.
The companion and enemy AI is frustratingly dumb. Companions tend to run around instead of attacking, and enemies sometimes just stand in place. Friendly fire makes things worse; I lost count of how many times I was shot in the back by another scout in my party or accidentally killed a melee companion while using my bow. There are no healing potions, only slow regeneration and a healing spell. If a companion dies, they’re gone for good. If you die, it’s game over. Also, your companions level up automatically. You can’t choose how to skill them, but you can give them items or even let them carry your stuff around.
The final chapter is where it all falls apart. Fireball shooting skeletons spot you before they’re even on your screen and kill you instantly. The shadow skill does not work on them, so the scout becomes useless. You have to use every trick in the book (and magic) to kill them before they hit you with a fireball. Dodging often won’t work because of the limited space. I watched videos of other people playing this part (with other classes) and it was the same. You have to save after every fight and reload so many times because of the constant dying. The worst part is the final stretch of the game, where after reloading (because you died again) every enemy on the map respawns, and they all rush to you and attack.
The game pretty much forces you to multiclass whether you want to or not. I tried sticking to my scout abilities (stealth+bow), but it's basically impossible. Even if you're dead set on playing a pure fighter or scout, you'll need to grab some magic skills along the way because the end-boss can't be taken down without spells.
You can pause the game, but there’s no way to pre-select an enemy to attack when you unpause, and clicking on fast moving enemies is a pain in general. Normally, left-clicking moves your character, and clicking on an enemy attacks them. But as a scout with a bow, misclicking can send you running straight into the enemy instead of shooting. Shift + Left-Click disables movement, letting you attack safely without accidentally charging forward.
The inventory system is nice, with layered clothing and armor that can give buffs but also restrictions. There’s a lot of loot, and in the beginning, I picked up everything to sell. But it’s not worth it. Items sell for so little that the constant trips back to the keep take more time than they’re worth and the grid-based inventory is very limited. Gold is never plentiful, but you don’t really need that much anyway. I only bought a few things (in the beginning) and the best items can be found in chests or on enemies. One thing to watch out for is where you store items you want to keep for later; some areas become inaccessible as the game progresses. Looting bodies can also be a hassle when enemies die on top of each other.
The graphics and soundtrack are fine considering when it came out, but the sound effects become irritating really quickly, especially this wolf howl in the village that loops constantly. The camera not rotating is frustrating since you're always fighting with walls blocking what you're trying to see. You quickly learn that X-ray vision is essential to make walls invisible and see what’s going on. Weirdly, the control settings aren't in the options menu where you'd expect, you have to press F1 instead.
If you care about achievements, you can get almost all of them in one playthrough, except for one that requires playing as a fighter. If you want 100% completion, you’ll either have to pick the fighter or replay the first three chapters again.
The game has bugs, is unforgiving and sometimes outright unfair, but I still have a lot of nostalgia and a soft spot for it.
